Despite the enormous spectrum of themes and the exploratory-experimental character of Zelko Wiener's approaches, the overview shows the impressive stringency with which he practiced his sign- and media-critical examination and how pioneering the developed methods of this pathfinder of media art were. What does it mean to realize that the image sign plays a particular role in Zelko Wiener's oeuvre? In it is revealed the search for an image medium that is not only the equivalent of sensuous perception but also the expression of systematization, of a perhaps even universal codification, the old avantgarde dream. Image-like signs, which show a figural presence in addition to their written codification, point to societal processes of standardization. In addition to the standardized use however, a different iconic existence is attached to them. In Zelko Wiener's early work the unconcerned independent existence of signs is clearly felt. In the early drawings, comic-like forms in strong strokes take up the middle of the picture; monumentally seeming plastically voluminous jagged structures appear like icons, body positions, and gestures. The staccato of the three zig-zag-lines is frequently interrupted by openings that allow the diffusion of the transparent colorful fill. It is not a coincidence that the influence of Asian calligraphy can be seen in the characteristic style of these drawings. More clearly tied to image symmetry, another graphical work shows Zelko Wiener's first reflections on the full and emptiness of image signs, and on their symmetrical and asymmetrical geometrification. He analyses with great sensibility the destabilisation of a constructivist image language in a fragment, in overpainting, in positive and negative forms, in figure and ground. That he carries these graphic techniques into computer graphics, as can be gleaned from the first picture, reveals one thing: the new medium is developed out of an old medium. The aesthetic language is not immediately revolutionized but remains consciously submissive to traditional image forms. These subtle strategies are nevetheless abandoned for the effective entrance of a sculpturally sharply cut standard form, which the artist develops in three-dimensional and futuristic, that is to say apparently Japanese dynamized Kin-objects. The sign has become a precious artifact, a manageable phallically connoted symbol. In the two-dimensional computer graphic entitled “Passwort“ it becomes an aggressive graffiti. The computer screen here still functions as image plane, screen, basis on which the sign is drawn. In Zelko Wiener's early work, it is especially interesting to retrace the threshold to the digital sign which is so important for media art. Wiener himself pointed out this peculiar phenomenon, that computer generated images are banished onto paper by the process of printing, that “classical data storage medium” as he called it still in 1989. The paper format as standardized medium of an everyday, bureaucratic image form is clearly recognizable in the discussed works and thus delivers a strong differentiating mark to the subsequent works.